


You Shall Have the World

by Cousin Shelley (CousinShelley)



Category: Evening Primrose (TV 1966)
Genre: 19th Century, Female-Centric, Gen, Minor Character(s), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21817096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/pseuds/Cousin%20Shelley
Summary: Helen Bainbridge led a charmed life until everything was ripped away from her. She's ready to do the taking now.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	You Shall Have the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Topaz_Eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/gifts).



The whole idea came to Helen in a dream. 

A man, a dark man whose face she couldn't see, motioned her to follow him through the crowd of shoppers. None of them noticed him, and most barely glanced at her. He led her through the department store, past a row of dresses and coats and a perfume counter a woman was polishing with a cloth. A bell sounded, the warning that the store was closing, and a sea of faces turned toward her so that they could walk to the doors. 

The man kept summoning her to follow. 

She hid with him until the last shopper left and the janitor swept the aisles far too quickly--her father would have fired any housekeeper who'd done such a shoddy job--and the lights snapped off. 

The dark figure led her deeper into the store. The smell of cooked meat made her mouth water. 

A feast was laid out on an elegantly covered table, though the sign merely said Luncheonette. The dark man wrapped his arms around her from behind until she felt as dark as him, and cold, and let herself be swept into it. 

When Helen woke from that dream, she wasted no time in packing her bag with the few pieces of clothing she had left. She laughed at herself, a humorless sound in the bare room. "You don't need to take anything with you. Everything you need will be there!" She clapped her hands and laughed, this time in pure delight. 

She closed the case, one of the few things she had left from her old life, and with a grunt hurled it across the room. "Good riddance."

She wore her coat, and carried a pocketbook into which she slipped her favorite deck of playing cards and a saddle-bound booklet on the rules of contract bridge. Helen had slipped both of those beneath her mattress when the men had come to carry out tapestries and furniture and jewelry, so along with a few suits of clothes and one or two other personal items, they’d come with her to New York. 

She’d smuggled a few things out of the house she wasn’t supposed to, as well. The men from the bank had taken most of her clothes and accessories to be sold, along with everything else she and her father had owned. But she’d hidden a few things from them, determined that no man was going to have the last word in her life ever again. She sold the valuable things to support herself. Those things were long gone, and the money was nearly spent, too. 

Her dream couldn’t have come at a better time. 

She walked until her feet throbbed. The buildings were different and she didn’t recognize anything or anyone, but something tugging at her heart told her she was going in the right direction. 

When she turned a corner and the department store sign came into view, a warmth flooded her chest. She put her hand on the wall to keep from falling over. 

"Are you all right, miss?" A man with a thick mustache and an accent she didn't recognize held her elbow. He had kind eyes, eyes like Bernard's, and despite his polite concern and gentlemanly demeanor, Helen instantly hated him. 

"Fine, thank you." She pulled her elbow free and straightened, and marched through the front doors of Stern Brothers. 

By the time the lights went off, Helen thought she might faint from holding her breath. She dropped to her knees behind the curtain where she hid and gulped air. Tears stung her eyes, but she squeezed them shut to keep them from falling. Her hands shook as she pushed herself to stand again. 

"I see you've made it," a man said from the other side of the curtain. She stiffened, wouldn't breathe, but he pulled the curtain aside. "I knew you would."

* * *

The man called himself Mr. Friday, and led her to a room barely warmer than a January night on Lake Michigan. 

"You were in my dream?" she asked, fighting to keep her voice from trembling. 

"Your dream? Oh, no. I can't get into anyone's dreams. But in the same way you felt drawn to come here, I can feel when someone's coming. It's how I know you fit here. You're right for this place."

She sat in a chair, and a smiling man with shining black hair brought her a steaming cup of tea. "I'm Roscoe, madam. Pleased to meet you."

"Helen Bainbridge. Pleased as well." She sipped the tea, too sweet but tolerable. 

Roscoe left the teapot and disappeared into another room. Mr. Friday sat across from her and crossed his hands on the table. Helen tried not to shiver, and finally held the cup in both hands to warm them. Unladylike, but sometimes exceptions had to be made. 

"Why are you here, Helen?"

"I told you, a dream."

"Yes, but why did such a dream lead you here? Most would have ignored it, as we do most dreams. What has happened that led you from the life you had to this one?"

"I was unhappy."

"Why? You strike me as a women of culture and refinement. Wealth. Why would you be unhappy in that life?"

"My father was wealthy. Until he wasn't." Helen promised herself she wouldn't cry, and explaining things would make that difficult. She straightened her spine. "At any rate, he's gone now. I'm alone and practically penniless, and I don't want that life. Not at all."

"The princess is not well-suited to be the pauper?" His smile was not kind, but hinted at amusement. 

"There's nothing for me out there, not anymore." Not since the letter from Bernard. The goodbye. He'd never loved her, she was sure now. He'd loved the fact that when her father died, Helen would have a mighty inheritance, and any man she chose to be with would live in style thanks to her father's investments and standing at the National Bank of Illinois. 

When the Reading Raiload and the Pennsylvania had failed in '93, she'd barely been sixteen-years-old. What attention did a child pay to the financial woes of businessmen? But the inheritance had started to dwindle. So many bank failures across the country and the push for free silver had whittled everyone's pocketbooks to scraps. By the end of '96 everything already belonged to creditors, so when the National Bank of Illinois failed, all hope was lost. 

"Nothing out there for you?" Mr. Friday asked. "No family? No suitors?"

"No to both," she answered, her tone more clipped than she'd intended.

In January of ‘97, her father had been found slumped against a building. Heart attack, probably from the stress, they’d said. He was one of many who didn’t survive the crash. 

Because of the debt and the final blow of the bank failure, everything that Helen thought would be hers someday was collected and sold. Her custom wardrobe, her jewelry, the tapestries, and her father's prize automobiles, his Stanley-Whitley and the Hartley four-seater only the wealthiest and most prestigious businessmen were seen in. All but a few suits of clothes and personal items sold to pay the creditors. Along with the things she smuggled out.

She'd tried to negotiate for the Hartley. Her father had been so proud of it, and Bernard had ached to drive it. 

"One day when you're my wife, I'll drive you and our beautiful children through town, perhaps on the way to the theater, and everyone will turn their heads and envy us."

There would be no drive now.

"Helen, please." Mr. Friday pulled a small tin from his vest pocket and opened it. The smell of mint tickled her nose. He popped one into his mouth and held it out to her in offering, but she shook her head. "You're young and so beautiful. Dazzling, really. I refuse to believe a lady such as yourself has no prospects."

Bernard had come to see her at her aunt's home outside Chicago, a few months after the bank failed and everything had been sold. He was full of concern, not at her grief at the loss of her father, but at how the financial assets would be distributed. She would still inherit all his wealth, would she not? 

Bernard's letter came a month later. He said he'd met someone else he loved and was leaving. He wished her well, and left no address where she could reach him. 

Two months after that when she could open her eyes in the morning without being attacked by that memory, she decided to leave her aunt's house. They weren’t rich enough to have servants, and her uncle seemed keen on marrying her off to one of his cronies. She could not stand to stay there and be pitied any longer, so she sold the things she could and went to New York. 

She couldn't admit to Mr. Friday that she'd been so silly to believe herself in love with a man who would have used her for her money. She couldn't appear that foolish. 

"I have no prospects that suit me," she said primly. 

He smiled, and Helen thought she could have counted all his teeth. 

"I like you, Helen. Perhaps you could be _my_ wife. In time, of course. Once you get to know me."

Mr. Friday was easily thirty years older than her, and he'd needed that mint. Something about the way he narrowed his eyes each time she answered set her on edge.

"Perhaps." She shivered, and pulled her limbs in tighter in hopes of not doing it again. 

"You're cold. Everyone's cold in here."

"Why do you keep it so?"

"Because the Dark Men can't stand it. This might be the only truly safe place in this entire building, my dear. Like reptiles when the temperature gets too cold they're dumb and slow and vulnerable. They won't risk being vulnerable."

"There was a dark figure in my dream," she whispered. "Could it have been one of them?"

"If you'd truly encountered one of the Dark Men, you wouldn't be here talking to me, my dear." He stood and took her elbow, so she rose and followed him into another room. He pointed at a mannequin of a woman dressed in a long velvety coat. "You'd be hollow like her, and I would have been deprived of meeting you."

He walked from room to room, showing Helen the layout of the building and which places were the safest during what times. And he talked about the Dark Men, and how they must call on them if anyone should discover their living arrangements. Or should any of their number try to leave. 

"That's . . . barbaric." She clicked her teeth together, too late. What if merely expressing a negative thought about them would be enough for this repulsive man to want her gone? 

"It is," he agreed. "But life is barbaric. All life, in some way, has its vicious traditions. This one is ours, and while I'm always saddened by it, I prefer it to many others."

He smiled as he spoke, as if he might not really be saddened by any of it. 

"And there is the matter of how this place changes people. There's a magic to it. Once you've made the decision to stay, you start to see the outsiders in a new light. They're like a different species entirely, so you only feel comfortable around the others here. Instincts kick in when an outsider approaches, a fugue of sorts, almost a hibernation that lets us blend in with the mannequins and fool the fools around us. We'd get no rest during the day at all without that."

He held open a door for her, then followed her through. "And it would prevent any of us from functioning normally in the outside world. I can't even imagine how alien it would be to walk amongst them, in the open. To have them see us." 

He shuddered, then took her by the shoulders. “I want to hear it from your own lips one more time, Helen. You’re sure this is the life you want?”

She decided her best course of action was to treat him warmly. Impress him. Gain his trust the way she'd trusted all the men who'd left her behind and left her penniless. "I'm sure. But even if I wasn't, the alternative is not very attractive." She beamed at him, turned on all her charms, and felt her face warm when it obviously worked. 

"Let's introduce you to the rest. They're going to love you, Helen."

* * *

Mr. Friday held to his word about letting her get to know him. He never pressed his advantage though they spent a great deal of time alone. One day, as they sat having tea, he brushed his knuckles across her cheek, his eyes bright, and it occurred to Helen that he thought she was a virgin. 

One more thing a man had taken before he'd left her. 

After three months of spending many hours in the cold room alone with Mr. Friday, Helen grew accustomed to it. She began to prefer the chill to any other part of the building, and he noticed. 

"You've adjusted like I have. The rest hate it, but it's safe, so I learned to love it."

"Why are you so afraid of the Dark Men, Friday?" she said, using the more familiar name she knew he liked her to. "Surely they wouldn't come after the leader here. If they destroyed you, the others might turn on them and their supply would dry up."

"They'll come after me if they're called to. They'll tolerate no risk. Any one of us could alert the authorities if we're discovered, perhaps for leniency." He stood and crossed his arms, then paced back and forth in front of her. "No, I don't trust them, and I don't really trust the others enough to stay quiet if we're uncovered. Why do you think I have to call the Dark Men when I sense restlessness among us? It's like this is my ship, and I can't tolerate even a whiff of mutiny. Not if we're all to be safe."

He officially proposed to her two weeks later, and Helen had her answer rehearsed. "Yes, I'll marry you, though I suppose there's no actual wedding to be had, is there?"

"We'll be married the day we decide to be married. I was thinking tomorrow, if that's all right with you. We'll have a party to celebrate. Everyone will be so pleased."

She stepped close. "A lady is entitled her conditions when accepting a marriage proposal, isn't she, my darling Friday? Other traditions have to be abandoned given our living situation, but might I be allowed to request a wedding gift? A dowry, you might call it."

He pulled her into his arms, and whispered against her hair. "What does my wife-to-be want as her dowry?"

"Not much. Not much at all. It's going to sound so childish, especially for a woman in her twenties."

"Oh, my dear, just tell me what it is."

"When I first came into the store, I noticed it near the front entrance. A white ladies cap with lace to cover the face. So very stylish. I think it might be from Paris." She looked up at him, contrite. "It's petty, perhaps, but I had a favorite hat that was taken from me that looked just like it. I would so love if I could wear it the day we're married." She pressed her body against his in a way she'd never done before, and gazed up at him. "I would be so happy, and grateful."

He took a deep breath and shook his head, even though his eyes told her he wanted nothing more than to please her. “Helen, you know the entrance is one of the places we must avoid at night. It's too risky."

"I'm sorry." She pushed away and wiped an eye with the back of her hand. "It was so selfish of me. I shouldn't have asked. Marrying you is gift enough."

She let her chin quiver and tried to remember if there had been any hats near the entrance at all. 

"Nonsense. It wasn't selfish. Just naive." He stroked her hair. "Tomorrow will be the happiest day of your life, even without that hat. You'll see."

Roscoe didn't offer congratulations when she told him of Friday's proposal. His lips went white, and he asked if she was sure. Friday could be a tyrant, after all, wanting to punish people for the smallest infractions, and turning over two of them to the Dark Men just this year because he’d only suspected dissatisfaction. 

"I'm sure, Roscoe." She stood before him and put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm always sure of everything I do. Don't you know that about me yet?"

Friday had told the others of the wedding over their dinner, and most everyone looked forward to the celebration. 

Roscoe was the one who informed them the next day that there would be no wedding, after all. Mr. Friday’s proposal to Helen must have been a ruse to have them all gather together upstairs and give him a chance to leave unnoticed. And poor Helen, learning of his plan, had to make the ultimate sacrifice and call the Dark Men on the man she loved to protect them all. They’d caught him near the front entrance. 

Helen cried, and was comforted by each person in turn, and then she retreated to the cold room with Roscoe. Later, she and Roscoe pointed out to the group that she’d spent so much time with Mr. Friday and that he'd told her things about the Dark Men none of them knew. After her selfless deed, protecting them all by sacrificing her own happiness, her loyalties were clearly proven. She seemed the most suitable to take over and lead. 

If any of them disagreed, they kept silent and would probably never dare show it. That suited her just fine. 

"Our leader can't simply be called Helen, or Miss Bainbridge," she mused to Roscoe after the decision had been made. "It's too informal, by far, and too ordinary. Too much like those outside."

"I think you're right. Would you like to be called Mrs. Friday? You came close, after all."

"God, no." They searched through a few rooms before she found what she was looking for. She tapped the calendar. "That's the day I came here. The day I found my fresh start in this new world of ours.”

Roscoe took her hand and kissed it. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Monday."

* * *

"She was beautiful, wasn't she? Odd, but beautiful in her way." Roscoe regarded the mannequin that had been Ella. 

Mrs. Monday preferred looking at Charles, admiring him and hating him at once. The line of his jaw, his forehead, all reminded her of Bernard. Charles was more handsome, and he'd been loyal to Ella to a fault. She supposed she pitied him for letting love destroy them both. 

Such a foolish reason to die. 

She pitied Ella more than Charles, because she'd had the misfortune to get lost in the store as a child. She had been lovely, and would have probably grown up to have a faithful suitor and the kind of life that had been taken from Mrs. Monday. If they’d let her go, someone like Bernard might have loved Ella truly, and that thought crawled around inside Mrs. Monday's head until she could only hate the child. 

The others wanted to let her go, but they were fools. The Dark Men would have known. They sometimes visited Helen in dreams, she was sure, like the dream that had led her there all those years ago. If they got into her dreams, she feared she couldn't keep the truth from them even if she wanted to. Friday would have thought her foolish, but Friday stood handsomely in a display window somewhere without a thought in his head for decades. 

The Dark men would have killed Ella, and may have turned on Mrs. Monday or any of them for being so reckless as to let her go. Even her hatred wouldn't let Mrs. Monday cause them to kill a child. Besides, she’d gone without a proper servant for so very long.

All Ella ever had to do was behave, but the young and beautiful are so spoiled. 

Ella stood now, eternally still, in a white dress that flattered her features and her figure, forever in the middle of a ceremony that bound her to Charles. All Mrs. Monday had ever wanted was to be wed to Bernard. Happy, in love, cherished. 

Even dead, Ella had everything she never would. 

"We must get back." Roscoe took her arm. "Almost daybreak, Mrs. Monday. The night watch will pass through any minute."

She glanced back at Ella, in the window with her beautiful wedding dress and a man who'd loved her to his own doom standing faithfully by her side. 

"Now you get to see the sun every single day," she said, and her bitter laugh followed her from the window display down the dark aisle, with Roscoe pressing her hand and promising that a few minutes in her cold room would be just the thing.

  
  
  



End file.
